Is it time for me to retire ? This has increasingly been on my mind recently as I experience deep frustration at both the students and our educational system. If I had to lay the heaviest portion of the blame on anyone, however, it would be on the students and their families. This past Friday's assignment presented a great example.
I was assigned the job of substitute teacher for a day of eighth graders at a middle school. When I got there I was greeted cordially by not only the main office desk staff, but also by a young woman I had met there before who, it turned out, was to be my assistant all day. She is a wonderful young lady -- perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, an African-American with three children, v ry bright and positive. She shared with me at various times of the day her aspiration of going back to school to become a fully credentialed teacher, her interest in anthropology, and her hopes of advancing into a better career than just that of being a "teaching aide."
From a substitute teacher's point of view, it looked as though it would be a very easy day. My assistant knew all the students, so she took attendance immediately when the period began, a chore that was a lot easier for her than it would have been for me. One of the handles the students always take advantage of with substitute teachers is that the substitutes almost never know them by name, which lets them act with a much greater degree of anonymity and immunity than they can with their regular teachers.
Before the first class began, my assistant shared something with me that boded an unpleasant day" "You know," she said. "These kids walk all over their regular teacher."
The day, however, was a lot easier than her comment had made me suspect. There was a lesson plan, about a third of a page handwritten and addressed not to me as the substitute teacher but to my assistant. Except for several half-hour study periods, one before and one immediately after lunch, each [period was to be shown the second half of the movie Schindler's List.If I were to do the least possible work, I could just sit behind my desk and let the students watch or do whatever else they wanted to do (other than fight, rough-house, o create disturbances).
It quickly became obvious trhat more than half of each class wasn't interested in Schindler's List, and preferred to chat and look at their cell phones. The last period really took the cake. Out of twelve students present )others had been taken from the class to take an exam), every single one of them occupied him or herself with a cell phone. No one watched the movie.
To increase the chance that some of the students might possibly watch the movie, the teacher had prepared a two-sided sheet with 25 questions relating to the movie. My assistant knew the individual students very well. She announced to the class that we had a sheet of questions that would be discussed on Monday, and that she and I would go through the class and offer a copy to anyone who wanted to do the work. She asked the students to take a sheet if they were going to answer the questions before Monday, but not to if they weren't going to do the work. "If you're just going to leave it on your desk, its a waste of paper."
It's a truth that if students in a class don't want to do their classwork, they won't, and there is nothing any substitute can do to make them. What I chose to spend time doing was to circulate through the class each period, seeing who was watching and who was not, and try to get some of the students engaged. I found a few who, having already seen the first half of the movie and presumably having had at least some introduction to the movie from the teacher, still did not know that the story is a true one. I tried to raise certain questions:
Have we ever had concentration camps in this country. Were plantations using slaves a little bit like small concentration camps ? What happened to Japanese-Americans at the beginning of World War II ? I pointed out that our concentration camps still existed and just needed a little work before they could be opened for business again. And then a long, roundabout explanation. Had they ever heard of Senator McCarthy in the 1950 ? Did they know how he set this country into an anti-communist hysteria ? I explained what had happened back then. What would happen, I asked, if we had another man like the late Senator McCarthy, someone who wanted to ride to prominence on the backs of members of a minority group ? Who would such a man pick to persecute ? Who would he go after ? Who is there currently enough feeling against so it wouldn't be too much of a possibility that Americans could turn against them ?
How about undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans ? A base of people already exists in this country who favor sanctions against "illegal aliens." Should we deport them all ? We haven't money enough to pay the fares for 11 million people to return to their homelands. Should we provide them with a path top become citizens ? "No," the Republican right thunders. That would be rewarding criminals for their crimes.
Suppose we just gathered them up and put them in our already built concentration camps ? What a boost it would be to local economies if we hired thousands of guards. I tried to drive home an idea that undocumented Hispanics live in an extremely vulnerable position, especially if another Senator McCarthy comes into national prominence.
And the final proposition I tried to emphasize is Santayana's famous statement that those who are ignorant of history are destined to relive it.
Maybe a half dozen students that day learned this.
By the end of the day I was filled with a slow simmering anger, which I could not express. I had begun to feel that the kids on their iphones, should be kicked out of school and sent home. They just didn't appreciate or understand the importance of education.
And that is why I have begun to question whether or not it has become time for me to retire.
I was assigned the job of substitute teacher for a day of eighth graders at a middle school. When I got there I was greeted cordially by not only the main office desk staff, but also by a young woman I had met there before who, it turned out, was to be my assistant all day. She is a wonderful young lady -- perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, an African-American with three children, v ry bright and positive. She shared with me at various times of the day her aspiration of going back to school to become a fully credentialed teacher, her interest in anthropology, and her hopes of advancing into a better career than just that of being a "teaching aide."
From a substitute teacher's point of view, it looked as though it would be a very easy day. My assistant knew all the students, so she took attendance immediately when the period began, a chore that was a lot easier for her than it would have been for me. One of the handles the students always take advantage of with substitute teachers is that the substitutes almost never know them by name, which lets them act with a much greater degree of anonymity and immunity than they can with their regular teachers.
Before the first class began, my assistant shared something with me that boded an unpleasant day" "You know," she said. "These kids walk all over their regular teacher."
The day, however, was a lot easier than her comment had made me suspect. There was a lesson plan, about a third of a page handwritten and addressed not to me as the substitute teacher but to my assistant. Except for several half-hour study periods, one before and one immediately after lunch, each [period was to be shown the second half of the movie Schindler's List.If I were to do the least possible work, I could just sit behind my desk and let the students watch or do whatever else they wanted to do (other than fight, rough-house, o create disturbances).
It quickly became obvious trhat more than half of each class wasn't interested in Schindler's List, and preferred to chat and look at their cell phones. The last period really took the cake. Out of twelve students present )others had been taken from the class to take an exam), every single one of them occupied him or herself with a cell phone. No one watched the movie.
To increase the chance that some of the students might possibly watch the movie, the teacher had prepared a two-sided sheet with 25 questions relating to the movie. My assistant knew the individual students very well. She announced to the class that we had a sheet of questions that would be discussed on Monday, and that she and I would go through the class and offer a copy to anyone who wanted to do the work. She asked the students to take a sheet if they were going to answer the questions before Monday, but not to if they weren't going to do the work. "If you're just going to leave it on your desk, its a waste of paper."
It's a truth that if students in a class don't want to do their classwork, they won't, and there is nothing any substitute can do to make them. What I chose to spend time doing was to circulate through the class each period, seeing who was watching and who was not, and try to get some of the students engaged. I found a few who, having already seen the first half of the movie and presumably having had at least some introduction to the movie from the teacher, still did not know that the story is a true one. I tried to raise certain questions:
Have we ever had concentration camps in this country. Were plantations using slaves a little bit like small concentration camps ? What happened to Japanese-Americans at the beginning of World War II ? I pointed out that our concentration camps still existed and just needed a little work before they could be opened for business again. And then a long, roundabout explanation. Had they ever heard of Senator McCarthy in the 1950 ? Did they know how he set this country into an anti-communist hysteria ? I explained what had happened back then. What would happen, I asked, if we had another man like the late Senator McCarthy, someone who wanted to ride to prominence on the backs of members of a minority group ? Who would such a man pick to persecute ? Who would he go after ? Who is there currently enough feeling against so it wouldn't be too much of a possibility that Americans could turn against them ?
How about undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans ? A base of people already exists in this country who favor sanctions against "illegal aliens." Should we deport them all ? We haven't money enough to pay the fares for 11 million people to return to their homelands. Should we provide them with a path top become citizens ? "No," the Republican right thunders. That would be rewarding criminals for their crimes.
Suppose we just gathered them up and put them in our already built concentration camps ? What a boost it would be to local economies if we hired thousands of guards. I tried to drive home an idea that undocumented Hispanics live in an extremely vulnerable position, especially if another Senator McCarthy comes into national prominence.
And the final proposition I tried to emphasize is Santayana's famous statement that those who are ignorant of history are destined to relive it.
Maybe a half dozen students that day learned this.
By the end of the day I was filled with a slow simmering anger, which I could not express. I had begun to feel that the kids on their iphones, should be kicked out of school and sent home. They just didn't appreciate or understand the importance of education.
And that is why I have begun to question whether or not it has become time for me to retire.
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